We’ve also got a very narrow balcony, which you could sit on but you can’t do much else with, and we’ve got big French windows that lead out onto the balcony. The view is of a hotel opposite, so it’s not really the most beautiful view, and you can almost see into the hotel rooms, and unfortunately they can see back into ours so we’ve put net curtains up to keep out visitors, as we’ve had incidences of people, tourists, taking pictures. I don’t know what they’re interested in, maybe they think they’re taking pictures of Hungarians eating breakfast or something like that.

As our flat is so small, it’s cheap and easy to keep warm, and also quite easy to keep clean. However, on the other hand, there’s not much space, as there’s only one room really to speak of. It’s right in the middle of the city, so it’s very quick to get to from anywhere, and is near to different metro lines, the red line and the blue line, so you can get to any part of the city.

My ideal flat or house would be, I suppose, somewhere not quite so central, but then I would like to have a car so that I could get in and out of town quickly. I would like to have a house, ideally with a garden so that I could have pets, maybe dogs and cats, and do gardening and grow plants. I’d like quite a few rooms in the house so that I could use one room as an office, which would be nice as I find it difficult to work in the same room as I normally live in, because there’s always a temptation to switch on the TV or to go and make a cup of coffee. So, I have to be very disciplined, or else have a separate room for working where I wouldn’t be distracted by outside interference or by my own laziness.

I’d also like to have a nice view, maybe a view of the river, and fresh air, so maybe to be up in the hills. I’ve always been used to living by water, and in Hungary I really miss being near the sea. I don’t know what it is, but there’s something I like about living on an island. It’s just so nice to be able to go out to the seaside and get some fresh air.

Vivien

As the district I’m living in now is right in the centre of town, it’s very convenient for schools and for work. It’s also good for shopping, although there aren’t many all-night or twenty-four-hour shops close by. I’ve lived in better places in this respect – although I have to say that Hungary is better than England, where there aren’t usually any 24-hour shops anywhere. Maybe there are a few in the centre of London, but they are the exception rather than the rule. But even if there are just a few 24-hour shops, if you want to go shopping in the daytime, for clothes or books or things like that, it’s perfect.

We have a park just around the corner which is very nice. It’s just been completely renovated. They dug up the whole park and put down new lawns, new grass, planted trees and built a playground for children and a dog toilet.

We’ve got a cinema right opposite us – actually, there are three within five minutes walking distance, which means we have a good choice of films.

The air is a problem. I have to say, the air quality is awful. I never go out onto the balcony of our flat, because you just get a big blast of smoke and fumes from lorries going past below. As a result, I’ve developed a cough, which is known as the Budapest chest. Almost everyone I know here who comes from abroad has developed some sort of cough, as a result of breathing in all the traffic fumes. I think the pollution in Budapest is much worse than in London, or at least it feels like it. Certainly, my lungs feel it. I think it comes from these old-style cars that don’t run on lead-free petrol.

I don’t know how much pollution comes from factories, but where I lived in South London it seemed like the air was much cleaner. Although, saying that, whenever I came back from my parents’ house in the country, I could immediately smell the pollution in London when I got off the tube. I got this smell of oily tar in the back of my throat and thought “Back in London!”

The area where I live is also not good from the point of view of noise, especially in the morning, as every morning at six o’clock, a rubbish van comes to take away the rubbish from the hotel opposite… every day at six o’clock… and they crash around. They’re only there for about ten minutes, but that’s enough to wake me up. And at night, there’s always people walking past, singing and shouting, because there are a couple of all-night bars down the road. This can also be a bit irritating sometimes.

A lot of traffic goes down the road outside our house. I’ve heard they’re hoping to make it into a pedestrian precinct and ban all cars from using it, which would be wonderful. I think it would increase the value of the flat by, I don’t know, ten times. I’d certainly prefer to live somewhere where there was no traffic going past. At the moment, people use it as a short-cut, particularly in the morning when there’s rush-hour traffic, and as it’s a very narrow street with cars parked on both sides of the road, people have to walk in the road, and then the cars start using their horns and shouting at people, and getting angry and stressed out. So all these things together, don’t make for a very peaceful life.

Two years ago, before I came here, I lived in London in an area called Brixton. I lived in a similar kind of situation to here. I was in a flat with three other people, for six or seven years. Different people came and went, different flatmates. Sometimes it was all girls, and sometimes there was a mixture of girls and boys. It was a really cheap flat, but it was also very noisy, as it was right by an intersection where five roads met, so there was always traffic going past and the house used to shake. It was also on the route ambulances used on the way to hospital, so there were all these sirens going past.

My parents live in the country, so I’ve lived in both the heart of the city and in the depths of the countryside, and I know the differences. The country is really nice… It’s really nice to go to the country for a break, but on the other hand I do get bored if I’m there for a long time, and miss things like being able to go out and go to the cinema, meet friends, and things like that. It was my ideal really when I lived in London, because I had all of that, but I could also go home to my parents and take a breath of fresh air, and just relax and do nothing for a while. Of course, the town is much better for work and for going out, although with the pace of modern life I think all of the people there get really stressed out and nervous, so it would be good if everybody had the opportunity to get out.